New 'Avengers: Endgame' trailer promises heartbreaking end

It’s the end of the Avengers — or at least the Avengers as we know them.

Avengers: Endgame, the 22nd entry in the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe that was kicked off in 2008 by Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, will conclude 10-plus years of storytelling when it opens next month.

The latest and presumably final trailer for the conclusion to last year’s Avengers: Infinity War has arrived and it’s filled with sadness and dread.

Melancholy seems like an odd tone for a superhero epic that’s assembling the who’s who of Marvel comics. But in the lead up to Endgame, the creative team behind the film — directors Joe and Anthony Russo and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely — have hinted that this will be like no other Marvel movie.

In an interview last year, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige told the Sun that the MCU is a world without end, but “storylines can come to an end” and the changes will be finite.

“This original 22-movie arc ends with (Avengers: Endgame) and then two months later it will be Peter (Parker) and Spider-Man (in Spider-Man: Far From Home) that usher us into the aftermath and how things proceed from there,” he said.

The new Endgame trailer doesn’t offer up any major spoilers, but it does show Downey’s Tony Stark/Iron Man back on Earth. It also gives us our first glimpse of the Avengers in Quantum Realm suits.

This is no surprise since Endgame will deal with time travel and alternate timelines.

With the addition of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, who came into possession of the Space Stone in her eponymous stand-alone debut earlier this month, most fans have theorized that Endgame will involve travelling back to the past to prevent cosmic maniac Thanos from acquiring the six Infinity Stones and ending half of all life on Earth as our heroes knew it.

Thanos with the Space Stone.

Opening with a nostalgic black and white montage, we hear Tony recording a message to his beloved Pepper Potts on the Guardians of the Galaxy’s spaceship Benatar.

“It seems like a thousand years ago … I fought my way out of that cave … became Iron Man … realized I loved you. I know I said no more surprises, but I was really hoping to pull off one last one.”

It then flips to scenes of Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers/Captain America and features a line of dialogue from Peggy Carter from Captain America: The Winter Soldier: “The world has changed,” she says, before hinting once again at time travel. “None of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.”

She appears at the end, as the God of Thunder is summoning his new axe Stormbreaker, and he says: “I like this one.”

With half our heroes killed at the end of Infinity War, it’s all but certain that some of those dusty fates will be permanent. But the Avengers won’t go down without a fight.

“Even if there’s a small chance, we owe this to everyone who’s not in this room to try,” Black Widow says.

“We will,” Rogers replies. “Whatever it takes.” That line is repeated by Black Widow and Iron Man.

During a visit to the set of Infinity War, the Sun asked elder statesman Downey to reflect on how the Marvel Cinematic Universe had grown over 22 movies and whether he envisioned a bursting-at-the-seams superhero epic a decade after he first appeared as Iron Man.

“I sensed glory,” Downey said. “But we’ve all kind of had this year to process what’s going on and the big secrets and the reveals and all that stuff, so there’s been plenty of time to get into acceptance. … I think we’ve become this kind of oddball family that genuinely looks after and cares for each other and supports each other. That’s a first for me.”

Evans echoed that sentiment, saying he was feeling a “cocktail of emotions” during one of his final days on the Atlanta set.

“It went by in the blink of an eye, but it was also a lifetime,” he said. “Without giving too much away, there’s a lot of reason for us to be together often.”

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